December 14, 2018

NHL the week in preview December 14, 2018

CBC seeks the warmth of southern Florida where there will be many more Toronto Maple Leafs fans than home fans. The Philadelphia Flyers find themselves in Vancouver in the late game.

Citytv will carry the CBC feed, a rare occurrence this season.

Rogers Sportsnet has an all-Canadian game with Ottawa down the road in Montréal. Hometown Hockey is in Chatham-Kent, ON with Winnipeg hosting the other Florida team. Wednesday Night Hockey has the Habs in the high air in Denver.

Rogers Sportsnet One steps in on Tuesday with the Edmonton Oilers hosting St. Louis.

Vancouver dominates the ESPN+ lineup this week, including the HNIC late game.

Those watching the NHL Network in the Los Angeles and Pittsburgh markets will get the Maple Leafs Saturday night.

Citytv

Rogers Sportsnet

Rogers Sportsnet One

TuesdaySt. Louis @ Edmonton, 9p

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We thought we were 2 games away from Bob Cole's forced retirement by Rogers. Cole has had a stay to be able to finish the regular season. Cole's last game is now scheduled to be April 6 with the Toronto Maple Leafs in Montréal.

Here is a list of remaining games Bob Cole will call this season:

December 15 Ottawa @ Montréal

December 22 NY Rangers @ Toronto

January 5 Nashville @ Montréal

February 6 Ottawa @ Toronto

March 9 Ottawa @ Boston

March 16 Chicago @ Montréal

March 30 Montréal @ Winnipeg

April 6 Toronto @ Montréal

If you are looking for logic on why Cole gets an extra 6 games and 4 months, you could point to Scott Moore's departure as a reason for the extension. Also, Rogers didn't have a backup plan to cover weeks with extra games in the east this season.

When Cole actually retires, Rogers could look into using Mark Lee as needed or make Rick Ball a national announcer and/or use Ball for most Calgary games and have Lee substitute when Ball is covering national games.

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Bob Cole made stop #8 in Edmonton for the Battle of Alberta Sunday night as part of the Hometown Hockey doubleheader. The game in Edmonton was available on ESPN+, which has carried both Battle of Alberta games this seas. The service might be poking at NBCSN and the NHL Network at their refusal to carry this matchup.

As we noted in yesterday's story, the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on Canadian soil sparked changes in the Huawei sponsorship with Rogers Sportsnet on Hockey Night in Canada. The visual references remained while the audio copy disappeared. The disappearance of 2 Canadians in China should change the dynamic even more this week. U.S. viewers can only monitor the pregame show this week.

NHL Network picked up the Winnipeg Jets feed on TSN3 for the Friday game with St. Louis.

The channel messed up and left out a 2nd period Calgary goal in the Thursday matinee rebroadcast of the game with Philadelphia. My sample size is rebroadcasts with Canadian teams, but every time there is a missing goal, that goal was scored by a Canadian-based team.

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CBC promos in December can be a little unusual since the fall season is winding down. The first promo was for Hockey Night in Canada and other NHL fare. However, the ad is for the Sportsnet page on the Shopping Channel in Canada. Unless the CBC gets revenue for actual Hockey Night in Canada fare, which is doubtful, then this shouldn't count as a CBC promo.

The promo for The National was for an interview with Rosemary Barton and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Cavendish is one of the new winter offerings. The intriguing element of the promo was citing a Tuesday, January 8 debut even though the show will run on Thursday nights.